The Dream Merchant: Former CIA Officer on the Stories that Shaped His Career
April 10, 2020 by Andrew Lamparski
Since his teenage years at the end of the ‘60s, Gene Coyle had always wanted to be a diplomat. He even completed an internship with the State Department during his time as a student at Indiana University.
“By the end of that summer, I was bored to tears,” Coyle said.
A mentor he connected with during his time at the State Department, however, suggested that he join the CIA. Coyle took the advice to heart, but was rejected from the agency twice.
After completing a Master’s degree in Eastern European Studies and spending a year in Hamburg, Germany, Coyle decided to apply again. This time, he landed a job. At the age of 24, Coyle said, he was the youngest in his class of trainees at the agency.
Coyle joined the CIA in 1976, when the United States was in the midst of the Cold War. In the ‘80s, Coyle spent time in Moscow working under the nose of the KGB. He said that getting assigned to the Soviet Union as a field operations officer was an honor, and that an abundance of confidence kept him from having any anxiety about the role.
“People who are confident think they’re right. Field operations officers know they’re right,” Coyle said.
Photographs from Coyle's travels in Kyrgyzstan in the mid-1990s. (Photo: Andrew Lamparski)
As a field operations officer, Coyle’s job was to recruit foreign diplomats to supply intelligence to the agency. This often required months of building up trust before finally asking them to help the United States.
“You may think you’re good. You may have done well in the training. But when you ask that question, the adrenaline is flowing,” Coyle said. He described those moments as being one of the hardest parts of the job.
One of the other major challenges, according to Coyle, is being ultimately responsible for the lives of the people he would meet with.
“If I made a mistake, the guy I’m meeting with is gonna be shot within a month or two,” Coyle said. “You gotta be willing to play God with other people’s lives.”
During his time in an unnamed Eastern European country, Coyle recruited a diplomat who supplied intelligence because of an ideological conflict between himself and his home country.
As the man was getting ready to return home, he left a letter with Coyle and other CIA agents. It was addressed to his son, to be delivered if he never made it home.
“[He said,] ‘If I get caught, they’re gonna say I was a traitor,’” Coyle recalled.
Coyle said the emotional exchange was one example of the personal side of espionage that made him feel the true weight of his job.
While Coyle doesn’t know for sure what became of the diplomat after that, he hopes the agency never had to deliver that letter to his son.
“Hopefully, that letter’s still in an envelope in the CIA headquarters,” he said.
The CIA awarded Coyle with the Intelligence Medal of Merit, which recognizes achievement in the intelligence field. (Photo: Andrew Lamparski)
The CIA awarded Coyle with the Intelligence Medal of Merit, which recognizes achievement in the intelligence field. (Photo: Andrew Lamparski)
Coyle’s time at the CIA, however, wasn’t completely weighed down by heavy experiences such as that one. He often found himself in once-in-a-lifetime experiences. He’s found himself playing a game of basketball with then-U.S. Senator and former NBA star Bill Bradley, playing cricket in New Zealand and drinking vodka with Russians.
“I gave my liver for this country,” Coyle said with a laugh.
Nearly 30 years into his career, Coyle was getting tired from his role as an international operative.
“You’re always out there looking for the next target. That just gets tiresome after so many years,” Coyle said. He added that the repetitive role as a case officer and more management-focused responsibilities didn’t help.
By 2004, Coyle had learned of a program that paired agents with universities to allow them to teach classes as visiting professors. He decided to return to his alma mater, Indiana University, to teach a handful of classes with topics ranging from international intelligence to European national security to a seminar on creativity.
By 2006, he had officially stepped down from the CIA, and by 2017, Coyle retired from his position at the university. While his time as a spy may be over, his career has had a lasting impact on how he views the world.
“It makes you a little more cynical about human nature,” Coyle said.
He explained that these days, he finds himself being extremely skeptical of people who are overly friendly, especially if it seems that there’s nothing in it for them.
He also says the CIA taught him that few things in life are ever black and white. Instead, he says, life is usually gray.
“The last real example of something being black and white is World War II,” he said. Most foreign policy, he says, is not so clearly defined.
So what’s next for the man who’s seen and done just about everything under the sun? Gene and his wife Jan hope to see the rest of America, for starters.
The couple started their “see America” plan back in 2006 when they officially retired from the CIA. They’ve seen 43 states, but are hoping to make progress on the last seven soon.
Now retired in Bloomington, Coyle writes novels inspired by his work in the CIA. (Photo: Andrew Lamparski)
For now, he’s busy writing spy novels based, at least in part, on his own experiences, including “Nazi Gold, Portuguese Wine, and a Lovely Russian Spy” and “The Dream Merchant of Lisbon: The Game of Espionage.”
The latter’s title comes from what Coyle says was his role as a field operative.
“I was a dream merchant,” he said. “My job was to find out what your dream was and how I could sell it to you to get something out of you.”
The former operative says he doesn’t necessarily miss his old career, but he does find himself missing his former co-workers, as well as the adrenaline rush of working in the field.
He often jokingly compares his own career to his older brother’s, who became an engineer after studying at Purdue.
“My brother made more money, but I’ve had more fun,” Coyle said.
Gene Coyle's Appears on Russia Live July 9, 2019
Gene Coyle appears on Russia “Live” with Andrei Malakhov during the program “30 years undercover: First interview of intelligence officers.”
In the "Live" world exclusive! Elena Vavilov, 30 years undercover. Her first interview of about 30 years engaging in espionage in the United states posing as real estate under the name Tracy Lee Ann Foley. During the interview she successfully defeats a polygraph, demonstrating that she can fool a lie detector and can keep secrets.
From Russia "Live" - a true chronicle of our lives:
For many years prime time, viewers have been gathering in the studio and on their television screens to learn about issues that concern everyone. About what the whole country will discuss. Issues that you can only see broadcast on "Live"! A new stage in the history of the program has begun - a new presenter - Andrei Malakhov! See stories and investigations that have become popular with the audience and have become the hallmark of the program, all that is really important and interesting to the audience of our country [Russia].
The full episode can be seen below:
Coyle Releases "Everybody Lie in Wartime"
Author Gene Coyle announced the release of his eight book, Everybody Lies in Wartime, available August 30th, 2018. In early 1944, General Donovan, the director the Office of Strategic Services sends Charles Worthington to open a relationship with the Soviet NKVD. A Russian agent, who claims knowledge of Soviet infiltration of the the Manhattan Project, has liaisons with a female employee at the British embassy, and is dogged by various Russian agents, informants and the Russian Winter must decide whether he will do what is best for himself or best for America.
Gene's books can be purchased from Amazon.com in Kindle or paperback format. Click here to purchase his latest novel, Everybody lies in Wartime.
Gene Coyle: Bloomington's Own Secret Agent Man
BY PETER DORFMAN, Bloom Magazine
“I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret,” Gene Coyle says, leaning in. “Being a spy is fun.”
A 30-year CIA veteran, Coyle spent 14 of those years in field operations overseas. “I joined at the peak of the Cold War, in 1976,” he explains. “My job was to meet a lot of foreign diplomats and find the ones who were recruitable to spy for the U.S. You’re looking for someone with something lacking in his life that you can fulfill. Usually it’s money. Some don’t like the way their governments are run. The risks are high. I had to convince them that I wasn’t some cowboy who was going to get them killed because they were literally putting their lives in my hands.”
Coyle was a field operative in Cold War Moscow, making brush passes (a technique in which operatives “brush” past one another to make an exchange) and putting down dead drops (where items are exchanged in a secret location without operatives meeting) for foreign agents.
One Eastern European diplomat Coyle recruited genuinely believed information he could provide would lead to better U.S. policy toward his country. “Before he returned to his home country, he gave me a letter,” Coyle says, turning solemn. “He said, ‘If I get killed, I’d like it if you could find a way to get this letter to my son.’ We were both crying. Here was a guy who was willing to put his life on the line to bring change to his country, and he wanted his son to know why.”
Coyle adds, “I also recruited some absolute scumbags. People will spy for every reason you can imagine.”
What was Coyle’s reason for joining the CIA? As a young man with a master’s degree in Eastern European history, he was motivated partly by patriotism, partly by the challenge of the “intellectual chess game” he anticipated. Mostly, Coyle admits, it just sounded like a kick.
Occasionally, the work actually lived up to Hollywood stereotypes. “You do go to a lot of glamorous diplomatic cocktail parties,” he allows. “I looked darn good in my custom-made tuxedo.”
More seriously, he says, “The tension you feel when you meet with agents is real, when you know what the consequences are if you screw up. I had weapons training. On the target range I shot 299 out of 300 with a snub-nosed .38, and 294 with a 9 mm. But I was never in a firefight. In one country they sent me to after 9/11, I did sleep with a gun under my pillow. I never did get the sports car with the hidden machine guns, though.”
By 1990, Coyle and his wife, Jan, who also had joined the CIA, felt ready to come in from the cold. They returned to the U.S. and stayed with the agency as open employees, officers allowed to self-identify publicly as CIA. Coyle worked under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a function called community management. That agency was mostly open employees, he recalls. “They had a softball team,” he says.
The CIA academic outreach program allowed open employees to teach, and one of Coyle’s stateside jobs was placing officers in university teaching positions. In 2004, Coyle came to Indiana University, his alma mater—he has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from IU—to teach courses in espionage and CIA history.
Coyle encountered initial objections from professors who felt a CIA veteran on the faculty would tarnish the university’s image. But after his classes got rave reviews he was asked to stay on. He taught for 13 years, until he retired in the spring of 2017.
“I tried to get across to students who were interested in an agency career that, as a field operative, you’re playing God with people’s lives,” he recalls. “If my agent got caught, I’d be sent home. My agent probably would get shot. If you don’t want that on your conscience, you probably should become an analyst, stay in Washington, and read books.”
Former students have stayed in touch. Coyle and his wife recently met with five of them in Washington, D.C. “We never had children of our own, so it’s a little like the old classic movie, Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” Coyle suggests. “They’re the kids we never had.”
Retired in Bloomington, Coyle, 66, writes and self-publishes spy novels. “In my books, the black box technology actually works, and the good guy wins,” he says. “It’s pure fiction.”
Coyle on Russian TV
A former CIA director has admitted the US interferes in other countries' elections and domestic affairs, when it's, quote 'for a good cause'. RT's Murad Gazdiev looks at whether double standards are in play. RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air Subscribe to RT!
Ex-spy and retired IU professor on the 'intellectual chess game' of espionage
By Bailey Briscoe/News at IU
In the 43 years since Gene Coyle completed his master's degree from Indiana University Bloomington, he has had two titles: adjunct professor and international spy. Coyle worked for the Central Intelligence Agency’s Operations Directorate as a field operations officer for 30 years.
Before he was an adjunct professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Gene Coyle recruited foreign diplomats in countries like Russia and Brazil as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Traveling to foreign locations like Moscow and Brazil, Coyle was tasked with meeting and recruiting foreign diplomats in those countries who were willing to become sources of secret information about their own government or world events for the United States government.
"It was an intellectual chess game," he said. "I had to make them feel comfortable enough to tell me what was important in their life. If there was nothing lacking, there was no reason they were going to agree to spy, because it was dangerous."
The Indianapolis native, who also has a bachelor's degree from IU Bloomington, said his IU degrees are what landed him the job.
A full-ride gymnastics scholarship first brought Coyle to IU Bloomington for his undergraduate career, where he connected with the U.S. Department of State for a summer internship after his junior year. Coyle quickly learned a desk job wasn't for him. However, a former CIA officer he met through that internship convinced him to apply for the foreign intelligence agency.
While he made it through to the interview round, he wasn't offered a position on his initial application. But in 1976, after adding a master's degree in East European history and a German study abroad experience to his resume, he began a career with the CIA at the age of 24.
"And it turned out I was fairly good at it," Coyle said. "People have always felt comfortable talking to me."
Over the course of his three-decades-long career, he only had one foreigner turn down his proposition to become a source. And he often recruited two or three spies per year, which, considering the work, is impressive.
"The KGB was good, but I was better." -Gene Coyle
Coyle said he also had an attitude of "almost arrogance" that was necessary to be successful at his job. While serving in Moscow in the mid-1980s, he had to think he was better than the KGB, the Soviet Union's security agency, which was trying to catch him communicating with Russian agents. He had to have this feeling of superiority to be able to go out on the streets of Moscow during the night and quickly decide whether it was safe for him to meet one of his agents, Coyle explained. Because if he had been wrong any of those nights about being followed, it would have meant danger for his Russian agent.
"The idea that I would get caught doing this never entered my mind," he said. "The KGB was good, but I was better."
Coyle spent nearly half of his career abroad, only coming back to the U.S. to learn another language and prepare for his next assignment. His wife also joined the CIA so they could take tandem assignments and avoid being apart for too long.
After spending 14 total years overseas, he decided it was time to do something different.
At the time, the CIA ran an Officer-in-Residence Program, openly placing officers at universities around the country to lecture on intelligence topics. Coyle chose to come back to his roots as the visiting CIA professor at IU Bloomington.
As he was nearing the end of his two-year placement, he was offered an adjunct position at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Over the next 13 years, Coyle taught courses on topics such as national security and the history of espionage before he officially retired in May 2017. He also found the time to author several spy novels based off of his own experiences, including "Diamonds and Deceit: The Search for the Missing Romanov Dynasty Jewels" and "A Spy's Lonely Path."
"Having myself conducted espionage operations gave me a lot of street cred with my students and allowed me to sneak a lot of knowledge into their heads while entertaining them," Coyle said.
It was his goal to teach his students about more than just the CIA. Coyle shared stories from his time abroad to teach life lessons, particularly about the opportunities an American education can bring.
One of those memories that stands out the most to him is from his time in Brazil, where children in the villages he visited wanted to be tour guides to make money. When he came across a young boy wearing cracked glasses, Coyle tipped him extra and told him to put it toward his glasses repair. The boy responded, "Maybe next year. I have to help buy food for my family."
"Many young people in the world would love to have the chance to come to IU," Coyle said. "I want to see our students taking advantage of the opportunities here. They have the opportunity to fail, but they also have the opportunity to succeed and become whatever they want in life, building on their education at IU."
And he had an impact on many of his students over the course of his IU tenure, some of whom still keep in touch with him, sending a card for the holidays or photos of their children.
In honor of his retirement, some of his former students established the Gene Coyle Legacy Scholarship. They flew back to Bloomington and gave him the news, hosting a surprise retirement dinner for him.
"For any teacher at any level, when you have enough of a relationship established that your former students keep in touch after years have gone by and there's nothing else you can do for them, that's rewarding. That makes you feel good," he said.
Making a difference in the lives of students was Coyle's way of giving back to a university that gave him so much, he said.
IU is where Coyle met his wife Jan, who he married in Beck Chapel 41 years ago. At IU, he also found lifelong friends and a career path that allowed him to travel the world.
"To say that this place impacted my life is the greatest understatement there could be," Coyle said.
Although he has been retired for nearly a full semester now, Coyle has no plans to leave Bloomington any time soon.
Coyle has been to more foreign countries than he has U.S. states, so he will use the extra time to travel domestically and continue to author fictional spy novels.
Objective Reporting?
POLITICAL BIAS OF NEWS REPORTING
Using my 18th birthdate as a starting point, I have attentively been following national and international politics for the past 47 years. First as a college student, followed by working at the CIA for thirty years and finally as a college professor for thirteen years, teaching courses on national security. And I sadly offer the observation that the political reporting by the overwhelming majority of major print and electronic media “journalists” since the last presidential election has been the most biased I’ve ever seen over those nearly five decades. The anti-Trump hyperbole by Democratic Party leaders and Congressional members is understandable – the losing side always complains. They chose as a presidential candidate perhaps the only Democratic figure who could have lost to Donald Trump, and the election results also gave the Republicans control of both houses of Congress. It couldn’t be that the American voters actually chose Republican candidates and view points; Vladimir Putin interfered and stole the election. However, journalists have always staked a claim to being the impartial observers and purveyors of truth to the American public. I’m sure they even teach that motto in most schools of journalism and they do have a section of newspapers called “editorials” where the personal views of journalists are supposed to remain.
While I haven’t been keeping an exact tally since last November 5th of every major reporting outlet, I’ve certainly had the clear impression that any interpretation of “facts” in news stories that managed to criticize President Trump personally or his policies, has been pretty much the standard approach to news coverage, certainly by the Washington Post, the NY Times and CNN, just to name a few. The current excitement about what President Trump recently told Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and the firing of FBI Director Comey has reached an absurd level of such selective reporting of “facts”, I was actually motivated to write this editorial. (Not that any major news outlet will actually carry it.) Before getting in to specifics about those two issues, I will also say that my view of the farce of “objective reporting” has also had in the last few days a personal experience.
Early on the morning of Tuesday, May 16th, I received an email from Nyja Greene, stating her title as CNN Editorial Producer, Newsroom w/ John Berman and Poppy Harlow, asking if I was available for a brief one-on-one interview for that show. “Topic will be Trump-Russia-Intelligence Leak.” Granted, I clearly hadn’t been her first choice of the day, as it was only an hour until the show went on the air. Ms. Greene had obviously had to dip deep into the CNN digital rolodex to find my name, presumably from when I had been interviewed on CNN (and several other news outlets in different countries) several years earlier. I was driving on an interstate at the time, and responded that I was quite literally, physically not available that morning. Ms. Greene replied and asked if I might be available on Wednesday or Thursday. After several more emails, it was agreed that Wednesday morning, during the 10:00 am segment of her two hour news show would work and CNN went ahead and sent an official request to Indiana University to use the broadcast studio of the School of Global and International Studies for my end of the interview.
I did think it a bit telling that she had referred to President Trump giving classified intelligence to the Russian foreign minister as a “leak” (as was the chosen word I later in the day saw was being used in a number of news articles online). I would learn less than 24 hours later, just how telling the choice of that word was. In a late Tuesday evening exchange with Ms. Greene, I was asked what my general thoughts on those two topics were. This had occurred several times before with various networks; apparently, at least in the past, so that the staff could prepare intelligent-sounding questions for use by the on-screen moderator. Shortly before 7:00 am on Wednesday, Ms. Greene left me a voice message and sent me a brief email informing me that due to a scheduling shift, I was no longer needed to be interviewed. I’d gone from being wanted on either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, to not being needed at all. Quite a coincidence that after CNN learned that I wasn’t going to use by background as a former CIA officer, Russian “expert” and college professor to bash President Trump as a suspect Russian agent, etc., I was no longer needed for a five-six minute interview.
Perhaps, CNN had indeed suddenly found more well-known individuals to have on their show in the coming days, but just maybe, their problem was that I didn’t have the “political views” that CNN was looking for to fit its biased opinion of President Trump. Just for the record, what I had basically told Greene was that a) it was a perfectly legal action by President Trump to provide USG classified information to any foreign government he wished, as had every president for decades before him; and b) if FBI Director Comey had felt back in January that President Trump had improperly tried to pressure him to drop the Flynn investigation, why hadn’t Comey immediately gone to the Office of the Attorney-General, or at a minimum, to the general counsel of the FBI and reported a possible obstruction of justice attempt? By only putting on the air “experts” who have the “correct” views is hardly objective reporting.
CNN is not the only news media to push a biased political view of these events, as factual reporting. Many major news organizations have conveniently skipped over the legality of Trump’s actions of passing allegedly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian Government. Many have also reported as a “fact” that based on Comey’s memo for his personal file, with his view/interpretation of what was said at the meeting with the president several months back, that President Trump could now be charged with obstruction of justice and impeached. A memo that had to date not actually been seen by any news organization, or the question of its accuracy. Being a “journalist” in America brings with it a number of privileges, such as conveniently being immune from prosecution for receiving and publishing classified government documents. There are also supposed to be certain responsibilities, such as factually and objectively reporting to the public political events. Sadly, a great many very liberal-minded journalists and news organizations have forgotten about that latter responsibility. They do a great disservice to the American public. I’m about to the point of not even watching TV “news” or reading political reporting in newspapers.
THE END OF THE JOHN BRENNAN ERA AT CIA – THANK GOD!
Only time will tell whether some actions by the upcoming Trump Administration turn out to be good or bad, but one action is guaranteed to be a good one – the resignation of John Brennan as Director of the CIA. The position of D/CIA is not a set term, as it is for the Director of the FBI. The D/CIA “serves at the pleasure of the President” and most directors go soon after the president who appointed them leaves office. President-elect Trump has spoken of several things he plans on doing his first day in office. Hopefully, one of them will be asking for the immediate resignation of Mr. Brennan, before he has any more time to ruin the Central Intelligence Agency with all of his “stylish” reorganizations.
My negative view of Director Brennan’s massive “overhaul” of the CIA is shared by many former and current Agency people, but I shall speak only for myself about his efforts, particularly of combining of DI and DO personnel into a multitude of “centers.” And I shall only speak of them in vague, general terms, so as not to incur the wrath of the Agency’s Publication Review Board – despite the fact that many of the details have been all over the press. During my thirty years at the CIA, a fundamental rule was to keep the analysts separate from operations. Reason one for this was to help keep to a minimum the number of people who knew identifying details about foreign assets who had been recruited by the Directorate of Operations – compartmentation. But equally important was the second reason – to keep the product of the analysts unbiased, by their only seeing the reports from assets and enough of a source description and statement of track record to date, so that the analyst could put a report in perspective. In the DO, there was always the phrase of “falling in love with an agent”, meaning that an operations officer’s view of the value of an agent’s reporting might be biased because he knew the agent, or knew many personal details of him. The separation of analysts from operations was to keep their assessments of the reporting untainted by knowledge of the person who had provided it.
Aside from the above two problems with all the Brennan centers, there is potentially a third. After some analyst works in one of these centers for several years, perhaps she or he comes to feel that they know as much as their DO colleague sitting nearby about what’s going on in Country X and wants to go be COS in that country. Who’s going to dare say NO? The 2009 bombing at FOB Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan that killed seven CIA personnel and wounded many more, caused by having a female analyst with no field operational experience in charge and making poor security/operational decisions is the most dramatic example of why that’s not a good idea. There have also been other, fortunately less impactful, examples of bad decisions by analysts pretending to be operations officers.
Director Brennan’s radical plans for change at the Agency are the classic steps of a leader who doesn’t really know what he’s doing because he doesn’t really understand the work of an organization, but who wants to have a big impact, so as to leave his mark and to stroke his ego. Brennan confuses motion with progress. Brennan has a reputation with many of being one of the great sycophants of all time at the CIA. He was always been known for firmly holding his opinion – just as soon as he found out what his superior’s opinion was on a topic. That is an excellent strategy for rising through the bureaucratic ranks. The problem is when such a person actually gets in charge and has to have their own intelligent thoughts.
Director Brennan has also committed the cardinal sin of getting involved in politics. Not that the rule has always been followed, but in principle, the CIA and its Director are to be above politics. In keeping with his methodology that got him to the directorship, and his desire to stay on in a new presidential administration, Brennan made it publicly clear that he was a supporter of candidate Hillary Clinton – hoping that he would then be rewarded with being kept on in her Administration. Nice strategy, except that in this situation, he sucked up to the wrong horse. He will now pay the price and can get on with writing his memoires or sitting on various boards of directors. Hopefully, President-elect Trump will choose as a replacement, someone who actually understands how the CIA functions and who will restore sanity to its organizational structure. There are many aspects of what that structure should be, but I shall only mention one of them here – restore the traditional country desk officer. There is the need in operational work to have continuity of knowledge on operations in important countries and possibly of relations with the governments of some countries. The Agency was full of legends of men and women, who possibly never rose very high in paygrade, but who everyone knew that was who you turned to if you wanted to know what was going on in Country A or Country B – and what had been going on there for the past decade or more. Director Brennan, and some of the other sycophants he has surrounded himself with, should have considered that the reason certain things were done in a certain ways for decades was because they worked quite well!
WHY ARE JOURNALISTS ABOVE THE LAW?
Attorney General Eric Holder has recently announced that the US Justice Department will not pursue the legal case to force New York Times reporter James Risen to testify as to who gave him the highly classified information that appeared in his book several years ago. In his book, he alleges that the CIA conducted a particular operation against the Iranian nuclear program. According to numerous newspaper accounts, the seeking of Risen’s source for the information is connected to the government’s prosecution of former CIA officer Jeff Sterling for giving out classified information. The legal case against Risen has been dragging on for several years, but had not been settled until this action by Holder. So, Risen does not have to name his source for the classified information he acquired to use in his book. Whoever in the government gave away the classified information is of course liable for prosecution, and if the source had given it to anyone but a journalist, the recipient would likewise face prosecution, but Holder’s action pretty well locks in as precedent that journalists – as they have long contended – don’t have to reveal their sources of information. They are above the law as it would apply to any regular citizen of the country.
But the question is, why are they above the law? I don’t recall voting for James Risen to any public office, nor any of the management of the New York Times, yet Mr. Risen took it upon himself to reveal to the world the supposed actions of the USG against Iran. Why does he get to decide what is good US foreign policy or not – and if he thinks it is not, he has the right to release such information. Giving such special privilege to people calling themselves “journalists” is troubling for several reasons. First, is the idea that journalists are such honorable, trustworthy individuals that they can be trusted with this special status. For the naïve who believe that, you might want to look up the names of Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly. These are but three “journalists” of major news organizations who were eventually found out to have been fabricating stories so as to promote their careers and their egos. Second, in this internet age of “social media” who is a journalist? Mr. Risen is allegedly a reputable member of a prestigious newspaper, but does that same immunity to the laws apply to every crackpot who has a blog site and a readership of four friends? I’m sure such obscure “journalists” would claim they are entitled to the same protections as the New York Times.
The Washington Post on its webpage proudly advertises an internet method by which “information” can be shared with the Post completely anonymously. I presume that this is so their journalists can in the future tells courts that they don’t even know who leaked classified information to them. Not that they really have any concerns after the very liberal and testosterone-free Attorney General has assured them they are above the law.
There is the famous case of how the Chicago Tribune in 1942 wrote dramatic stories about the Battle of Midway, which to any literate reader who knew anything about sea battles, it was pretty clear that the US Navy had been reading the Japanese Navy’s coded messages preparing for that battle. Fortunately, no one in Japan subscribed to the Chicago Tribune and it was decided by the White House that to prosecute the journalist and paper involved would have brought even more attention to the articles – and thus confirming suspicions raised by the articles that we had broken the Japanese code. Such poor journalistic ethics in 1942 might somehow be explained as wanting to give the American public some good news after the disaster of Pearl Harbor a few months earlier. But in November 2014, the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial in connection with efforts to get the grand jury testimony of 1942 released and still being arrogant asses, proudly claimed that they’d had the right to publish such stories back in 1942.
Home About Gene Coyle The Blog Coyle’s Books Contact U.S.–German Spy Relations
Last fall, there were the allegations, based on the traitor Edward Snowden’s alleged NSA documents, that the N.S.A. had been monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone conversations and recording meta data of who in Germany was calling whom. This caused a small tempest in U.S.-German relations and certainly gave anti-American factions within the German political scene a great rallying issue. (By the way, when my father-in-law, who’d been a B-17 tailgunner in WW II, heard about this accusation, his response was: “I certainly hope we’re listening in on the German chancellor.”) This past week has brought forth news stories of one and possibly two German officials being caught and charged with having spied on behalf of the USG, presumably for the CIA. Chancellor Merkel ordered the expulsion of the CIA Chief of Station Berlin over these cases and as a general complaint that the USG hasn’t taken seriously her proposal for a no-spy agreement between the two countries. Several German Parliamentarians have called for a lifting on the supposed German ban on espionage activities against America. (One wonders how strictly the BND has followed that claimed ban in the post-USSR years.)
As for the expulsion of the COS, that should first and foremost be seen as a domestic political gesture by Merkel. It’s a bone to her political opposition about the spying and it’s a nice way to draw any domestic discussion on German foreign policy away from real issues. I refer to useless policies such as Germany’s failure to do anything about Russia’s invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory, the Crimea region, or the ongoing Russian supplying of arms and men to groups within Eastern Ukraine. (Nor is Germany likely to do anything more than “talk” given Germany’s massive dependence on Russian energy imports and as a market for German export products.) Nor does Germany carry any weight concerning Syria, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian problems or Afghanistan. For all its economic power, Germany is fairly irrelevant in the world of foreign diplomacy.
The reality of the world is that except for a few very special cases, countries spy on each other. I vaguely recall from last fall some inane comment about how if America wants to know what Chancellor Merkel is thinking, President Obama can simply phone her and ask. (An amazing presumption that world leaders never dissemble to one another.) Over the last decade in particular, Germany has openly criticized and worked against a number of U.S. foreign policy actions and given its energy dependence, rarely does anything that might annoy Russia and Mr. Putin. America has been involved in two world wars in the last hundred years and both times, Germany was on the other side. We are indeed on paper NATO allies, but that alliance means ever less as the members around Europe continually spend less and less on their militaries – and have no political will to rock the diplomacy boat.
Chancellor Merkel wants to join the mutual no-spy circle with the United States, which according to many newspapers includes the U.K. Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It’s not that the governments of those countries never disagree with Washington foreign policy, but there is a longstanding common history, culture and politics with those four countries – that is not there with Germany. Germany is an ally by treaty and we do on occasions have common policy goals, but not always. Germany has its own interests that it pursues and particularly being under Mr. Putin’s energy thumb, those interests and America’s will continue to be at times at odds in the future. It would be foolish not to try to find out what the German Government is really planning on doing on certain international matters. Instead of complaining so loudly about alleged U.S. spying, perhaps Germans should be asking themselves why America feels it needs to spy on them.
I confess, I did ask myself this week why were we spying on Germany. I obviously came to the conclusion that it was an overall good thing. Part of my calculus was the recollection of a comment made to me over 40 years ago by the first real live CIA officer I’d ever met – before I’d even joined the Agency myself. I was a summer intern in Washington DC in 1972 and had written the draft of a memo concerning “West Germany” in which I’d referred to the country as “our best ally in Europe.” Rich, now a retiree in the sunshine of New Mexico, said to me: “There is no such thing as a best ally, only today’s friends and tomorrows potential enemies.” I also read the Washington Post Editorial Board piece of 11 July, concluding that it was “stupid” to spy on our allies. After reading that piece of naïve hogwash, I knew I was correct about the need to spy on Germany!
The Games of Bergdahl, the White House and Closing Down the Afghan War
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been released by the Taliban after five years of captivity and will soon be home in Idaho. On the surface, this sounds like good news. The only American POW of the Afghan War has been “rescued” and there will be celebrating in his home town and by his family.
Reality, of course, is a bit more complicated. First of all, he was not released, he was traded by the USG for the release of five fairly senior Taliban leaders who had been sitting in Guantanamo Bay prison for many years. So much for the American policy that we don’t negotiate or swap prisoners with terrorists. The sophistry being used by Obama Administration officials that we negotiated with the Government of Qatar, not the Taliban is just that – word games. It hardly matters who carried the envelopes. We’ve released five senior insurgents in exchange for Bergdahl. The five are supposed to stay under supervision of the Qatar authorities and remain in Qatar. Anyone want to take that bet? And now there will be even more of an incentive by the Taliban or any terrorist group to take hostages, in order to get colleagues out of prison.
Congressional Republicans are upset that the White House violated a regulation that says Congress is to be given 30 days advance notice before releasing any prisoners from Guantanamo. The White House says this was a sudden opportunity and Bergdahl’s health had been in jeopardy and they couldn’t wait. While legally correct, this complaint does seem on the picayune side of polotics. Of course the Obama Administration didn’t inform Congress because (a) the details of the secret negotiations would have been leaked to the press by the following morning, and (b) all sorts of embarrassing questions would have been raised even before the swap was made. Bottom line is that the White House didn’t want to be in the situation of shutting down the Afghan War and leaving at the end of the year, with the awkward situation of leaving a POW behind.
Nobody in the Administration really cared how Bergdahl had come to be a POW. A fact that is looking more and more sleazy, if one is to believe the accounts of his fellow soldiers from June 2009. He either walked away from the base that night intending to desert, or foolishly walked away with some Afghan “friends.” In either case, he wound up in the hands of the Taliban. The likely facts of his disappearance have been known by the Army for five years, but generally swept under the rug. What a PR nightmare that would have been – “GI doesn’t like the war and walks away from his post.” Amazingly, as part of the charade that the Army and the Obama Administration wanted to maintain, the Army has actually promoted Bergdahl from Private First Class to Sergeant while he’s been in captivity. Adding to the bad taste in the mouth is that six U.S. soldiers were killed in the weeks right after the “disappearance” while hunting for Bergdahl to “rescue” him! No doubt the Army will now be handing him all of his back pay for while he’s been playing badminton with his captors.
The Bergdahl story is really an excellent lesson as to how Washington politics work and the concern of presidents to make sure history speaks well of them. Don’t let the true facts of Bergdahl’s disappearance get in the way of a grand humanitarian gesture to bring home our only POW. Don’t let a wise policy of not swapping hostages with terrorists block an exchange, nor any little regulation of informing Congress in advance of releasing prisoners from Guantanamo. We’re getting out of the long (and probably long-term, pointless) Afghan War and getting Bergdahl home was just one more little tick on the shopping list of things to do.
No doubt there will be a ghost-written book out in time for Christmas sales by Bergdahl and perhaps even a movie deal by next year. The Army should hold a courts martial trial of Sgt. Bergdahl, but the odds of that happening are about the same of the released Taliban prisoners staying in Qatar. The Obama Administration will continue patting itself on the back and explaining how they honorably left no man behind – no matter what the costs down the road for its actions. I’m reminded of the wonderful line at the end of the John Wayne/Jimmy Stewart classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, dealing with the issue of a good story versus reality. A young journalist finds out that the Stewart character didn’t actually shoot bad guy Liberty Valence, as had been thought for years and upon which the character had risen to the US Senate. His editor burns the journalist’s notes and says, “This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
SENATOR FEINSTEIN SHOCKED AT CIA’S “EIT” PROGRAM (OR) THE MYTH OF AN OBJECTIVE CONGRESSIONAL STUDY
The Democratically-controlled Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI), chaired by California Senator Feinstein (D), has just voted to release to the public the 480-page executive summary and the 20 findings of a study carried out by only the Democratic Majority of the Committee. This study began in 2009 and was completed in 2012. The highlighted phrase means that only Democratic staffers of the Committee conducted the “study” about counterterrorism activities ordered by a Republican president in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. That fact alone makes one suspicious of the “objective” conclusions reached. More telling is the admitted fact that the Democratic investigators in three plus years of research never bothered to interview Jose Rodriguez, the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and then the Director of all Clandestine Operations for the period in question, nor other senior CIA officials. (I guess when you know what conclusions you wish to reach before you even start the study, it makes it easier to decide on your investigative methodology.) Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican Minority Leader of the Committee, in explaining why he voted “yes” to release the report, stated he did so “Despite the report’s significant errors, omissions, and assumptions—as well as a lot of cherry-picking of the facts—I want the American people to be able to see it and judge for themselves.” (That also allows a testosterone-free Chambliss to claim how he managed to be both against a biased report, yet vote for it.) Unfortunately, this Report has been reported by the news media as the Senate’s SSCI-concluded “facts” – and thus its conclusions are the Gospel truth about the ineffective, lying and torturing CIA. (Take a look at the choice of words in headlines of news articles in the subsequent days about the Report.) It has not been reported simply as the biased, Democratic Party opinions of a Democratic investigation, done in a half-assed manner.
As for the substance of the Report, through leaks of the as yet unreleased Report to journalists, we already know that major conclusions (accusations) are that (1) no useful information on terrorist activities was obtained through Enhanced Interrogation Techniques; (2) many things done by the CIA were illegal; and (3) the CIA lied to Congressional investigators. And while not in the original Report, Senator Feinstein has recently also publicly accused the CIA of having “spied” on the SSCI investigators. Per news reports, the CIA has reported to the Justice Department for investigation alleged improper handling and removal of classified material that was made available on computers to the SSCI investigators.
As for the first accusation, President George Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Director of CIA Operations Jose Rodriguez have all publicly stated that the harsh interrogation techniques in the first few years after 9/11, including waterboarding, produced valuable intelligence that helped stop future planned terrorist attacks. Granted, those people and others with such positive claims have a vested interest in promoting the idea that the interrogations obtained valuable information. But are their “biased” views any less correct than the “biased” views of Democratic Party staffers-only working on a committee chaired by Democratic Party Senator Feinstein, whose virulent anti-CIA views have been known long before this three-year “study” ever began. (Hard to believe isn’t it that SSCI staffers would have let their boss’s pre-study views affect their investigation!) At least on this point, Senator Saxby was more adamant in his opposition to the conclusions of the Democratic report: “While I agree with some of the conclusions in this report, I take strong exception to the notion that the CIA’s detention and interrogation program did not provide intelligence that was helpful in disrupting terrorist attacks or tracking down Usama bin Ladin. This claim contradicts the factual record and is just flat wrong. Intelligence was gained from detainees in the program, both before and after the application of enhanced interrogation techniques, which played an important role in disrupting terrorist plots and aided our overall counterterrorism operations over the past decade.” So, who is correct?
I’ve found it sadly amusing that private individuals and politicians who are so adamantly against “torture”, as they like to call almost everything done by the CIA, have to also believe that it doesn’t work. I guess it makes them feel better to believe that they’re views don’t actually impede the discovery or stopping of planned terrorist attacks that kill innocent people. At several ethics conferences I’ve lectured at – yes, they let me in the door – I noted the frequency with which people started sentences with the phrase, “As we all know, torture doesn’t work…” I guess this is simply one of those basic tenets of the Liberal mind upon which facts make no impact. Apparently, unpopular facts made no impact upon the Democratic Party SSCI investigators.
As for accusation number 2 that the CIA did illegal things while interrogating captured terrorists, President Obama’s Attorney-General Eric Holder looked into those accusations soon after coming to office – and I’m not aware of anyone at the CIA having been charged with anything, other than one contractor who the CIA itself had reported to the Justice Department years earlier. This has been a favorite witch-hunt theme by Democrats during the Obama Administration Era, despite the fact that all the techniques employed had been authorized by President Bush and legally cleared by his Justice Department. (I was not the only CIA employee who found it insulting that if the Obama Administration believed waterboarding to have been “illegal”, why didn’t they start a Justice Department investigation of President Bush and top White House officials, instead of picking on mid-grade CIA officers who had done as ordered and who’d been told it had been cleared by the Justice Department.)
As for the third accusation that the CIA had lied to Congressional investigators, I guess this follows from their logic that having reached other conclusions about the efficacy of enhanced interrogation than what the CIA told people was the truth, that makes CIA officers liars. Given that they didn’t even bother interviewing senior CIA officials directly involved in EIT such as Rodriguez, when was it they lied to the investigators? This is all rather reminiscent of Congresswoman Pelosi’s (D-CA) claims back in 2009 that the CIA had not briefed her on waterboarding and other techniques during a meeting in September 2002 when she was a member of the HPSCI. Records released by the CIA and published in various newspapers and statements by Jose Rodriguez at the time of the release in 2012 of his book, Hard Measures, seem to refute her claim. As the terrorist Abu Zubaydah had just been captured in August, had been waterboarded and had provided information (per various newspaper accounts), it’s hard to imagine that the CIA would not have been touting their success at a HPSCI briefing in September! Hers would not be the first nor last example of “selective memory loss” by a politician once the political winds had changed. In 2002, the American public wanted revenge and wanted to be made safe from further terrorist attacks – and Pelosi heard nothing at the HPSCI that concerned her back then. By 2009, suddenly she is “shocked” to learn of waterboarding!
Perhaps what is most informative (and scary) of this SSCI Report are not the specious conclusions, but as another sad sign of the state of our Congressional affairs and the petty, partisan political games that go on there instead of actions of leadership for the welfare of the country. The Gallup Poll of approval by the public of Congress dropped to 13 percent for April. The rating has been in the teens for the last several years. For many years, the work of the SSCI and the HPSCI on national security issues had for the most part remained above the petty partisan bickering that has so characterized Congressional behavior for the past decade – and has led to such pathetic poll results. Sadly, in the last few years, both Republican and especially Democratic, members of these two important committees have sunk into the political mud of their colleagues – where having a good sound bite and “scoring” a point against the opposition is now more important than accomplishing things in an honest, objective manner. This latest Report by the SSCI reaches a new low in biased, political maneuverings, where the two parties couldn’t even agree to both participating in the investigation. It isn’t a study of the CIA. It’s an attempt to trash the Republican Bush Administration.
This sad trend is one of the reasons I no longer recommend my students to seek employment in the CIA or any of the other national security agencies. Why work hard and long, and perhaps in physical danger, just so that when the next Administration comes to power, your work and your honesty will be questioned and investigated by the Justice Department — so that one political party can try to score a few points against the other. Such a sad, biased state of federal government oversight hardly encourages current CIA officers to stick their necks out and take risks to make America safe, knowing that five or ten years later some political hack is going to be judging their actions with hindsight and political motivations.